Smile, Even Though It's Breaking
by starrysummernights
Summary: Sherlock can't keep still. He rubs his shaking hands against his expensively tailored trousers, leaving sweat marks behind as his body jerks and jitters, muscles contracting, outside of his control, stomach lurching, needing drugs. Fiercely.
1. Chapter 1

**This is meant as a companion piece to my other story, "Smile, Though Your Heart Is Aching." This is Sherlock's POV, while the other was Mycroft's and it's not necessary to read them together, but the experience will be complete if you do. Sherlock is in uni at the time of this chapter.**

**Thanks for reading.**

* * *

It burns. All the emotions inside his body that are clamoring to get out _burn_ white hot and scorching. It is agonizing.

Sherlock wants to scream as the pain reaches staggering crescendos inside his body. He can't keep still. He paces the length of his small (thankfully private) dorm room. He can't keep still. He rubs his shaking hands against his expensively tailored trousers, leaving sweat marks behind as his body jerks and jitters, muscles contracting, outside of his control, stomach lurching, needing drugs. Fiercely.

He closes his eyes, breathes in deeply. It doesn't help. He resumes his restless pacing.

All the…_feelings_, the emotions he normally tries to suppress and place himself above cannot be contained. They hurt him like so many razor blades embedded beneath his very skin. He wants to claw them out, rake his nails through the epidermis, peel back the dermis, and gouge out the pain that seems to reside in his very soul.

It's not possible. He knows it's not. It doesn't make the pain any less real. Or maybe it's the pain of withdrawal. He honestly doesn't know anymore.

The voices shouting and braying in his head are the worst. He grips his hair with both hands, clutching the soft curls between his fingers, and _pulls_. It doesn't help. The voices keep right on talking, spewing their venom that he's heard a hundred times.

Sherlock keeps pacing.

The voices scoff and mock, they are sarcastic and doubting, telling him things he already knows. He is alone. He is a freak. He hates himself.

He is unraveling.

He can't be the person Mycroft is. He tried. He spent his formative and teen years trying- trying so hard- to be the person his brother manages to be so _effortlessly_: perfect. Sherlock knows he can't keep himself together like that. He is flying apart at the seams. In his more fanciful moments, Sherlock believes he could lift his shirt and see stitches along his sides, like those of a ragdoll, bulging and rending themselves as what they contain fights to escape.

He despises Mycroft. He hates his calm, his politeness, his ability to keep it together and _smile_.

Because he can't.

He can't…

A quick call and Sherlock is meeting his supplier in an alleyway behind the building he takes Chemistry in. If he stands on his tiptoes, he can peer in the window and see the lab room, the table where he works by himself, the glass beakers, top-of-the-line microscopes, specimens and experiments all lined up and ready to go. If he goes back to his dorm right now he still has time to finish his assignments and get a few hours rest before class tomorrow… He shudders, chills that have nothing to do with the cold wracking his body.

No. None of that matters.

He stands with his back to the building and chafes his hands together to ward off the cold, stamping his feet in the snow in an effort to keep them warm. The cold comes from the inside, though, and his exertions are wasted.

The sound of footsteps are loud in the snow-covered landscape. Sherlock turns. The transaction is over quickly and in less than five minutes he is back in his room, the syringe held steady in his hand as he stares at the patchwork of needle marks on his inner arm.

He is unraveling. He knows it.

The drugs, though, are the sweetest release, a blessed few hours when he is not himself. He is transformed. He is floating. Life seems infinitely sweeter when he is high.

He has tried so many other outlets: school, cutting, alcohol, sex. None of them compares to the high cocaine can give him.

He doesn't care while the drugs run riot through his system. That, in and of itself, is wonderful. Restful.

He doesn't care.

The ceiling above him is spinning, spinning, spinning. Sherlock smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

**This chapter depicts a very unhealthy relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Victor Trevor. Just be warned.**

* * *

Love doesn't exist. Sherlock knows that.

"Beautiful."

The whisper is hushed, reverent, and warm hands drag down Sherlock's chest, pianists hands, long fingered, soft palmed. Gentle and sure. Questing fingers trail softly over the length of his cock, making Sherlock jerk in reaction and arch, his heels digging into the mattress. The answering soft chuckle makes his stomach clench in dark anticipation.

"So eager."

Victor Trevor moves back up Sherlock's body, dragging his own erection against Sherlock's hip, and kissing him, plundering Sherlock's mouth in a way he'd find presumptuous and unwelcome with anyone else, but with Victor…with Victor it's perfect.

Sherlock bites his lip and arches, his spine bowing in a beautiful curve as Victor enters him and he gasps and moans into the pillow. Victor's hands are everywhere. Tugging at his hair. Smoothing over his back. Gripping his hips. Sherlock is overwhelmed.

Afterward, they lay together, their legs tangled, one of those long-fingered hands pressed possessively over Sherlock's heart as it slows down from its frantic, frenzied gallop. It's foolish and sentimental.

Sherlock still allows the contact, losing a bit more of his heart in the process.

* * *

He'd met Victor at a party months ago. He'd been high at the time so the exact details are blurry, but Sherlock remembers snogging the taller man on the dance floor, being felt up in a dark room, and then leaving, stumbling out into the cold winter night after him, laughing, carefree and reckless.

He remembers- vaguely- the slide of cool sheets against his skin, the rough grip of hands, and begging for someone to go faster, harder, yes, yes please. The rest of the evening is lost in a nauseating swirl of color and sound.

When Sherlock had woken the morning after the party, safe and warm in an unfamiliar bed, he'd experienced a moment of fear. He couldn't remember where he was, how he'd got there, and a quick check of his body confirmed there'd been physical relations. He wasn't as bothered by that fact as he maybe should have been. It wasn't the first time such a thing had happened.

Sherlock had shifted, throwing back the covers and preparing to climb out and retrieve his clothes from parts unknown-

Then he'd seen Victor, still stretched out beside him asleep. Fully naked. And been mesmerized.

He hadn't wanted to be. His one-night stands were just that- one night. Transient, fleeting things with strangers he never expected, nor wanted, to see again.

He didn't even remember this man's name.

While Sherlock had debated with himself, Victor had woken, blinking sleepy green eyes up at Sherlock before focusing, smiling at him lazily and stretching. Sherlock's eyes had been drawn down his lithe body, his cheeks heating up under Victor's scrutiny like a bashful teen.

"Hey, gorgeous."

His throat had closed up at the sound of that rough, posh voice, something tugging at his memory. He recalled that voice from last night, muttering filthy obscenities in his ear as he'd been fucked. The memory made Sherlock squirm.

He'd found himself smiling back, somewhat shyly, and letting Victor pull him back down beside him, pressing him against the sheets and kissing him.

* * *

Three months later, and they're still on. Not a couple, not proper boyfriends, but it's the longest, most stable relationship Sherlock has ever had.

Victor has his own flat off-campus, and Sherlock stays there more often than at his own dorm. Victor has a better supplier than Sherlock, one he can fully rely on, and he provides the drugs while Sherlock provides the money. They get high and fuck every chance they get. Victor always seems keen and Sherlock loves the attention. He can't get enough of Victor, both his conversation and his body.

"You're so beautiful, Sherlock. So fucking gorgeous." Victor whispers throatily. He has Sherlock stretched out on his mattress, hands loosely bound to the bedframe, and has spent the last half hour teasingly licking every inch of the younger man he can.

Sherlock's first reaction is to scoff, roll his eyes, and push Victor away with a sneer. But the way the compliment is uttered, the sincere look in Victor's eye…and instead Sherlock turns his head away, burying his face in Victor's neck and closing his eyes. His heart soars beneath his ribs in a way it never has.

"Do you even know?" Victor presses, pulling away, fingernails raking down Sherlock's sides, smiling at the sounds he manages to elicit from the younger man. "Do you even know how bloody gorgeous you are? So pretty."

Sherlock shakes his head, either in answer to Victor's question or in denial of the fact, and Victor laughs. He's always laughing. It's what Sherlock likes most about him, what draws him back to Victor again and again.

He is everything Sherlock is not, everything Sherlock wants to be.

He is everything Sherlock wants.

"Lovely." Victor remarks, nudging Sherlock's head back and kissing him, nipping at his lips until they are rosy and throbbing.

"Pretty boy." He whispers and Sherlock shivers. Victor enters him with such care Sherlock aches, wants him to go faster because this, this slow undoing, hurts worse than any hard fuck he's ever had.

Love doesn't exist, but this is the closest he's ever been to it.

* * *

Victor texts him during class and Sherlock leaves without a second thought, without making an excuse to his very put-out professor. He meets Victor at his flat. The drugs are already laid out, ready, and Sherlock can't tear his eyes away from them.

Afterward, they fuck, hard and fast, sweat making Sherlock's hair stick to his forehead as Victor pushes into him from behind. Victor's thighs slap against the back of Sherlock's legs, making them sting, and the pleasure, all the sensations- the rough carpet beneath his hands and knees, the burn of penetration, the throbbing of his cock, the hot beat of sunlight on his skin- merge into one blinding, devastating supernova.

He comes, moaning Victor's name, and feels Victor shudder behind him, thrusting hard one last time and then stilling before spilling into his body. Sherlock sobs at the feeling, shaking, and collapses to the floor, Victor a heavy weight atop him.

Sherlock floats on a wave of endorphins, his mind quiet and tumescent, silenced and cowed beneath the weight of drugs and sex. He feels as if his body doesn't even touch the ground. Spinning. Spiraling. Weightless. It's wonderful.

He could cry from the beauty of it.

A delicate kiss to his head and a quiet murmur in his ear brings Sherlock back to reality.

"So…so beautiful."

Victor shifts, pulling out, and Sherlock whines at the loss of contact before Victor lays back down beside him, stretching out on the carpet with Sherlock. He sighs, fingers tracing the bumps of Sherlock's spine.

"Love you, 'lock."

It takes a minute for the words to penetrate Sherlock's haze. When it does, it's like an electric shock.

"What?" He raises up on his elbows, wincing as his rug burns make their presence known.

"Hmm?" Victor hums, eyes closed, enjoying his own high.

"What did you say?"

"Oh. That I love you." Victor's green eyes gaze up into Sherlock's and that fission of undefinable emotion wells deep in his chest.

Victor smiles at him, as if he knows.

Sherlock is terrified. He's never been so happy.

* * *

When Sherlock accidentally overdoses a few weeks later, Mycroft finally intervenes.

Sherlock is withdrawn from uni, his belongings packed from both his own and Victor's flat while he is still in hospital recovering, and, once he is discharged, Sherlock is shipped to rehab without his consent. They don't need his consent, Mycroft tells him, cold in the face of Sherlock's hot anger, outraged at this high-handed treatment.

He never hears from Victor again.

He doesn't know if Mycroft intervened or if Victor simply didn't care.

Sherlock doesn't want to know the truth.

But he thinks he knows anyway.


End file.
